A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul.
The higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess.
The greater amount of truth is impulsively uttered; thus the greater amount is spoken, not written.
False hope is nicer than no hope at all.
The people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them.
Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become.
Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells, From the bells, bells, bells.
How much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the most appalling spectacles of inanimate matter.
In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.
I am a writer; Therefore, I am not sane.
If I could dwell where Israfel hath dwelt and he where I he might not sing so wildly well a mortal melody while a bolder note then this might swell from my lyre in the sky.
I am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd.
By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.
Happiness is not to be found in knowledge, but in the acquisition of knowledge.
In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.
If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by wind and spry together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection.
There are some qualities, some incorporate things, that have a double life, which thus is made. A type os twin entity which springs from matter and light, envinced in solid and shade.
We allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour to one or two hours in its perusal.
My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design.